Larry Niven - The Barsoom Project

The leader reached into Robin’s body and chanted something so low that she couldn’t hear it and then he twisted…

Robin screamed. She hoped never to hear another such scream. She slid back against the rock slab, panting. Yarnall pulled her goggles away from her, and donned them, hanging over the smoke stack to hear what was going on.

“Aiiiee!.. ” Robin sounded like a soul dragged over the coals. “All right. All right. All right.”

The leader’s voice was smarmy with self-satisfaction. “Good. Speak. What could have given you enough power to overcome our bathers?”

“We… my companions carried magic of our own.”

“Magic? Greater than the sky-metal?” There was a general hush of anticipation, and Eviane heard herself saying:

No! Robin! Wherever your soul is, don’t let them force you “Aiiie!”

She didn’t need to see to know what had been done. Yarnall crawled back next to her, choking. “Good Lord! Did you see what they were-”

Charlene took the goggles away from Yarnall and looked for herself. For about three seconds. “They play rough,” she said.

Bowles shrieked madly, “Falling Angel wire! Woven into our backpacks and tents! Round and round it goes, and where it stops-”

Yarnall blanched. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Robin just spilled his g- I mean he’s told them everything. They’re going to be looking for us.”

“For us?” Charlene asked. Her lantern jaw worked furiously on a nonexistent stick of gum.

“If they can get the Falling Angel wire, they’ll have more power than ever before. We may have made a mistake, bringing it to them.”

The three of them cautiously climbed back up the mountainside, testing the shadows as they went. Eviane felt sickened, but utterly determined. They worked their way back to where seven Gamers waited for them in a pocket of shadows.

Johnny Welsh and Snow Goose spoke simultaneously. “What did you see?”

Yarnall informed them, in graphic terms, of the Cabal’s dread necromancy. “Can we turn him off somehow?”

“Robin is beyond any help I can offer.” Snow Goose looked sickened.

Orson and Max squatted together. “What’s our play?”

Orson leaned back against one of the stone slabs. “Well… I would say that Yarnall is right. We’re in for a bad time. Look at it this way. We’ve freed Sedna, and she’s growing healthier by the moment, I’d guess. The Cabal must be desperate. They need that wire. They also know we’re here, so I would expect things to hot up.”

Frankish Oliver crouched next to them, looking slightly Pancho Villaesque in his bandoleer. “What are our options?”

“We’ve come too far to back out. And if we run, we have nowhere to run to-as long as The Cabal is safe, the whole world is in danger.”

“So what do you think?” Snow Goose asked.

“Well-the satellite, the sky-metal. It’s here somewhere. They worship it. It’s been the source of much of their power. It has to be here.”

“We can’t take it with us-you can see what it did to them. Damned thing is radioactive.”

They were downcast, looking at each other as if hoping that one of their faces might hold an answer.

Snow Goose spoke quietly. “I hate to suggest it, because it is a totem of such power. But if it cannot be used safely-”

“I’d say not,” Yarnall reiterated. “Look how sick the Cabal are. Nothing but magic is holding those bastards together.”

She nodded. “Then it must be found, and destroyed.”

“Destroyed,” Charlene said. “How?”

“That’s a good question. Daddy never said anything about this.”

“Maybe we could get it out of their reach,” Charlene offered.

“Bury it under a glacier, or in the sea, or maybe give it to one of those land whales.”

“I think one of them is a land whale,” Orson said.

“Blow it up,” Yarnall said. “Oliver’s got those flare grenades-”

Johnny Welsh shook his head. “Not enough, I’d think.” Orson had been staring into the wall. “Listen, people,” he said, voice dreamy. “These magical objects are like storage batteries-the further they travel, the more magic they hold, right?”

“Yeah… ” Johnny Welsh’s mobile face was twisted with concentration, as he strove to second-guess Orson.

Orson rubbed his hands together, warming to his theme. “What if the ‘storage battery’ metaphor holds true in more ways than one? Couldn’t we rig some kind of forced discharge? I mean, or short-circuit them… ”

“Got it,” Max said. “Snow Goose, if we gathered all of the Falling Angel wire into one place, all of the backpacks and tents, dumped them on the satellite wreckage, do you think you could cook up a spell that would drain it?”

Snow Goose thought for a moment. “Wait,” she said. “I need to meditate about this.”

She closed her eyes, and pressed her hands against her ears, chanting softly.

Eviane felt the excitement. It was a terrific idea. Executed properly, it could destroy the power that the Cabal had used to bind the Raven, throwing the whole situation into a new ball game.

Done wrong, of course, it could kill them all. She could not foresee the result… and that was the best part. What she could foresee from the choices she knew, was blood and ice and universal death.

She could hear all of the breathing in the confined space as if it was her own. Finally Snow Goose opened her eyes. “All right,” she said. “We can do it.”

They would have hooted or hollered or something, but the nasties that haunted the island would have heard them, and come for lunch. So they just formed a circle and hugged each other, and began to lay their plans.

The multitowered rise of San Diego’s EnCom Plaza was a billion-dollar paean to the ego and accomplishments of one man:

Kareem Fekesh.

Alex Griffin shielded his eyes as he emerged from the tube station. Although only an eighteen-minute ride from Dream Park (including tube transfer) the tubes had been relatively quiet, and dark. Alex had closed his eyes, trying to keep the tension at a dull roar.

Understandable, considering what was sitting in his lap, and what he had to attempt.

The sidewalks buzzed with activity, and in the midst of it he felt slightly uncomfortable.

How long had it been since he ventured outside the environs of Cowles Industries? With all of the resorts, shopping malls, entertainment complexes, and health services, he actually hadn’t needed to leave the corporate environment for…

Over a year?

Astonishing, now that he actually thought of it. Closer to two years, maybe.

The executive jets, the tubes, the vacations in Aspen and fishing in Bermuda… All of these things had been owned, controlled, designed by Cowles Industries, if not outright owned and maintained for the use of the executive staff. A totally self-contained world.

Alex was suddenly, painfully aware of how vulnerable he felt. There was no nod of recognition from the hundreds and thousands of people passing him on the street. The street sounds were foreign to him-there were still internal-combustion engines in San Diego, albeit small, efficient ones. He could smell it in the air.

It was new, and in a way exciting. He ran up the dozen steps to the Glass Tower, the tallest and most prominent building in EnCom Plaza, rising above the others like a giant standing on stilts.

He ran up those steps, a tall, redheaded man, lean in his three-piece suit, extremely fit, and alert. Perhaps the nervousness didn’t show. Perhaps.

The guard at the front door stopped him-him! — and asked his business.

The guard was portly, with dark skin that didn’t seem to be any protection from the sun. His skin was peeling badly on the tip of his nose, and on his neck. Alex handed him the coded card Fekesh’s secretary had sent via courier.